Entertainment

How Social Media is Helping Veterans Connect

Today, the United States reflects on the 60th anniversary of the Korean War. For those who fought in the conflict and returned home, staying in touch with fellow service members was a battle in itself; many lost contact with their friends. Those who managed to find each other did so using resources and technologies now considered obsolete: Phone books, microfiche, and even old-fashioned letter writing.

Today, e-mail and other social media tools are the primary methods of communication for almost anyone who owns a computer. But for veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, social media has been a lifeline, keeping them apprised of the latest news from back home, and reconnecting them with comrades when they return from deployment.

Keeping in Touch During Deployment

Captain Nate Rawlings, 28, served two tours in Iraq with the Army’s First Battalion, Twenty Second Infantry Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division. His younger sister created a Facebook profile for him prior to his first deployment. He used the page through both of his deployments to tell his friends when he’d be out, to check back in when he returned, and to find out how his parents were coping with his absence. “If my dad felt that my mother really needed to hear my voice, he would put a message on my wall that said 'E.T. phone home,'” says Rawlings. “And so I would find a phone.”

But he wasn’t using social media just to reassure his mother. Nate was using it for his own reassurance. His Facebook page became a window into the life he left behind. “People would be getting married, people would be having kids, and people would be graduating from college or high school, and so it was a neat way to see those pictures and think: ‘OK, I’m not completely isolated from my friends,” he says.

Social Veterans Causes

Today’s veterans are also using social media as a method of mobilizing fellow veterans and bringing awareness to the causes they support. Anuradha K. Bhagwati left the Marine Corps as a captain in 2004. She was only the second woman to complete the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program instructor trainer school, and holds a black belt in close combat techniques. Today, she’s executive director of SWAN (Service Women’s Action Network) and also one of its original founders. What began as a healing network for women veterans is now taking an advocacy role under her leadership.

“It started out with this healing community element where women would feel safe,” she says. “We kept that at the core of what we do, but we’re dealing up front with some serious policy issues: How to transform military culture so that rape and harassment [don’t] happen.”

Through an awareness campaign that includes speaking at panels, partnerships with other organizations and even online advertising, SWAN’s Facebook Page presently counts almost 2,400 followers. “I think we had less than 1,000 in December,” says Bhagwati. "We just started up a Facebook site in the fall [of 2009].” Using SWAN’s Facebook and Twitter pages, women veterans can find everything from SWAN-sponsored community events (yoga and gardening classes), to resources for homeless veterans, to a phone number for their LGBT women’s hotline. “A lot of [gay service members] will find our helpline information on our website,” she says. “If they need resources, they’ll find us.”

Connecting Veteran Communities

The use of social media to connect members of a similar community is a tried and true approach. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) is a non-profit organization that, according to their website, “is the nation’s first and largest group dedicated to the troops and veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan" and their civilian supporters. Their mission is simple: To improve the lives of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families.

One of the ways that IAVA employs social media is through their website’s Community of Veterans (COV) feature. Though IAVA’s membership is approximately 125,000 people, only 55,000 are veterans, of which only 5,200 belong to the COV. Jason Hansman, community manager for the COV says that before he approves anyone for membership, the person has to submit paperwork “that proves definitively that they were boots-on-ground in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

With only 0.5% of the American population knowing what it’s like to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan, the therapeutic value of joining such a network can’t be overstated. “Someone coming back home in Montana is not necessarily going to have a neighbor that served in Iraq or even understand what serving in combat is like,” he says. “Community of Veterans fills that gap, so they can connect with veterans all over the country.”

Once a veteran logs into COV’s main page, he or she can enter a real-time chat room, join one of the 288 groups that already exists, or start a new group. The groups, as diverse as their audience, include everyone from tattooed vets, to Army Airborne alumni, to those who are living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Those who wish to join the PTSD support group must submit additional paperwork verifying they have it, ensuring another layer of protection and privacy for those already in the network.

Because of the tighter scrutiny and selective admission into the PTSD support group, “the conversations blossom into something much deeper than what’s going on out in the forums,” says Hansman.

IAVA recently partnered with a new social media service called JustCoz that allows its supporters to donate one tweet a day to IAVA. Based on JustCoz’s premise that “a message from someone you know personally is five times more likely to trigger an action,” supporters can log into their Twitter page via JustCoz and give IAVA the ability to tweet one message a day.

According to Anuradha Bhagwati, “We do serve a lot of older veterans and they tend not to find out about some really neat stuff that’s going on because they’re not as fluid with this new media.” It could be that the real downside to social media might be not using it at all.

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